Bronze Age (from about 2000 to 800 BC). – According to collegetoppicks.com, Bronze was not produced in Germany at first, but was introduced there as a material of exchange in the form of bars, axes, rings and spirals. However, the new metal was soon being worked on in Germany too, and cast bronze objects were produced. The types of objects – especially those made in the northernmost provinces – are highly original and independent from those of other countries. Weapons and ornaments, as well as objects of use and vases, develop with an extraordinary multiplicity, and sometimes reach a high degree of art, while ceramics decay. This artistic excellence is achieved above all in the northern regions, in the homeland of amber; the southern regions initially suffer from dependence on foreign models from the south, but in the end their industrial activity receives a great increase from commercial exchanges with the regions of the Mediterranean basin. Among the ornamental motifs, the most important is the spiral. Montelius divided the Bronze Age of Northern Germany into five periods, based on typology (v.bronze: Bronze Civilization). This northern German bronze civilization is certainly Germanic: not so that of southern Germany. Its development in central and southern Germany, which are part of the central European area, although it can in some way mark parallel to that of the five periods assigned by Montelius to Northern Germany, is nevertheless independent of it, and the transition to age of iron occurs sooner. It is true that the bronze civilization of southern Germany develops from the Neolithic of Northern Germany, but it soon acquires a particular physiognomy, which is given mainly in the Danube region by the elements inherited from the peoples of the ribbon pottery, in the western regions from the influence of Western Europe. This
Parallel to each other the civilizations of three provinces, an eastern (civilization of Aunjetitz), a western (civilization of Adlerberg, and a southern (civilization of Straubing); common characteristic features are the use of placing corpses huddled and not very deep in the ground (German Flachgräber), the small triangular daggers and the large copper necklaces. Northern Germany would have been Germanic. Unlike this primitive phase, the following phase, characterized by burial mounds (German. Hügelgräber), represents – at least in southern Germany – a homogeneous and long-lived civilization, of which many elements still persist in the Hallstatt period. The use of raising mounds, already in vogue in the last Neolithic phase among the populations characterized by cordicular pottery, was introduced by a nomadic people; the custom of indicating the place of burial with a visible sign not only presupposes an intensification of the cult of the dead, based on the intimate need for a union with the deceased, but also the existence of a by now innate feeling of respect for the dead, for which the tombs of long-dead families, and even those of foreign lineages, are also made sacred. These tombs most often contain the corpses of inhumates, more rarely and in more recent times, of cremated; generally the corpses are in large numbers, which attests to being collective burials; the rich trousseau that accompanies the dead is the main source of our knowledge on this period of the Middle Bronze Age, knowledge that is rather scarce as regards the houses. More frequent are the news on the dwellings of the late Bronze Age; from this period in fact we have for example, between the Elbe and the Vistula, numerous fortified castles, which use the construction system with poles; one of them is the so-called “Roman trench” (knowledge which, on the other hand, is rather scarce as regards housing. More frequent are the news on the dwellings of the late Bronze Age; from this period in fact we have for example, between the Elbe and the Vistula, numerous fortified castles, which use the construction system with poles; one of them is the so-called “Roman trench” (knowledge which, on the other hand, is rather scarce as regards housing. More frequent are the news on the dwellings of the late Bronze Age; from this period in fact we have for example, between the Elbe and the Vistula, numerous fortified castles, which use the construction system with poles; one of them is the so-called “Roman trench” (Römerschanze) near Potsdam. Parallel to these castles – probably belonging to Germanic tribes – the civilization of Lusatia (Lausitz) takes place in eastern Germany, whose offshoots go as far as central Germany. The last phase of the Bronze Age is constituted by the civilization of the fields of urns (German Urnenfelderkultur), so called from the custom of placing the ashes of cremated in large clay vessels lined up and stuck in the ground. It seems that there was an ethnic difference between the populations who cremated and those who buried, similarly it seems that it can be asserted for Italy.
